


Succor

by mresundance



Series: Crossing the Threshold [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Lesbian Character, Comfort, FTM Will, Fix-It, Gen, Lesbian Character, Threats of Violence, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"I guess you dodged a bullet with me," she says.</em>
</p><p>A rewrite of Margot and Will's scene in 2x10, "Naka-Choko". The no-sex version. :)</p><p>You don't need to read the other stories in the series to understand this fic. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Succor

"Are you scarred?" Margot asks. 

Outside the wind blows, low and cold, scraping the windows with icy fingers, whispering around the boards Will had nailed over his shattered window. It's darker with that window boarded, and Margot's face is like the moon: the merest sliver of light in darkness. But a cold light, not warm or comforting. There's something strange, even alien, about her. Like alpine tundra that takes hundreds of years to grow a mere inch, she is brittle, fragile, and strong. Trying to grow in an inhospitable environment. And the way she looks at him, with wide, wide eyes -- desperate -- that's the same look a drowning woman has before Will would jump in to rescue her, only to have her pull him under. 

She looks away. 

"Probably more than I know," Will answers. And he can feel the weight and shape of the scars on his shoulders, his chest, his lower belly. Gunshot, knife wound, chest surgery, hysterectomy, all folded into his personal landscape. 

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," she slurs the words a little, either from drink or bravado, Will isn't sure. He nearly snorts his own whiskey up. 

"Margot," he says gently, shaking his head, and the whiskey makes that motion feel bigger than it is, makes his head feel loose, like it might spin off. 

"Just because I'm . . . trans doesn't mean sleeping with me is like sleeping with a girl."

Usually he'd loathe explaining -- would just walk away and not even bother -- but he feels sorry for Margot. 

"I'm not fucking stupid," she says, and begins to cry, shoulders, thin as matchsticks, collapsing together. 

"Margot," he says, putting his drink down and his arms around her. She is light and delicate as a humming bird, and her heart, through her shoulder-blades, beats almost as fiercely as a humming bird's. Despite their size, humming birds know how to fight, and to kill. 

"No," Margot shoves him. "Goddammit," she scrubs her eyes, as if she can dig them out. " _Goddammit_ ," she says, louder, loud enough to make the dogs whimper in their beds. She starts crying again. 

"I don't know what else to do," she says finally. She sits on the edge of Will's bed now, wrapped in a scratchy old blanket, face burned red from weeping, cradling a mug of warmed whisky in her thin hands. "He has everything."

"Your brother?" Will asks, sitting next to her, his hand just in the small of her back, hoping it's comforting. 

"Yes," she says. She smells of fine perfume and whiskey and, with the blanket on, the dogs. 

You're like so many girls I've dated and slept with, Will thinks but doesn't dare say. So many lesbian girls who knew, in their heart of hearts, I wasn't one of them. Tall girls, short girls, fat girls, thin girls, middling girls, white girls, black, brown, butches, femmes, androgynous, lipstick lesbians. They are not at all the same, but they all come together now, the memory of each one indecipherable and indistinct to Will, except that they were all women who had loved women and who had tried to love him. He'd known other transmen, like him, who had thought they were lesbians for awhile, and were devastated when they transitioned and had to leave this sisterhood. There was something about these women, their community -- their histories, their experiences, their scars -- that had comforted these other men, made them feel like they had come home in some way, even if, after all, home was in a different place.

When he understood he wasn't a lesbian, Will hadn't felt relief, exactly. It had been more resignation at that point, and a kind of hope. Oh, he'd thought. That's why I don't work as a lesbian. Or with straight men. Because I _am_ a straight man. 

But now Margot brings back all those pre-transition feelings and confusion somehow. The yearning to be close to those women who he could never really get close to. The yearning to be close to someone, anyone, who might understand and alleviate the feelings of disgust and discomfort he felt about himself; who might make him feel less alone, less alien somehow. 

He laughs at himself and Margot frowns.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," he says. "Me," he admits. 

"Oh." 

They sit together. Will enjoys the smell of her perfume mixed with the musky wood-smoke of his house. It almost feels like home here. It hasn't felt like that, not completely, since Hannibal framed Will for murders by toying with his lures. It is one thing for Hannibal to fuck around with his mind, one thing for Hannibal to actually fuck him like he had after the barn, and in therapy. Will had wanted Hannibal to fuck him. But it is another thing for Hannibal to come to Will's home -- that sacred, inner, silent space that was all Will's -- and leave murderous little fragments of the outside world. 

"Will?"

"Hm?"

"Do you know a guy who can get me knocked up?"

Will laughs again, startled. 

"Why would you want that Margot?"

"Because then I could -- have something."

Will waits for her to finish and she doesn't. Instead she closes her mouth and looks so determined it frightens Will. 

"I don't really Margot. Not unless you figure out how to seduce Hannibal Lecter."

Margot cocks her eyebrow. 

"Don't," Will says.

"I know, but --"

"No."

She sighs. "Probably he would say it was 'inappropriate' anyway. Like suggesting I should murder my brother isn't."

"Yes, well, we both know what Hannibal Lecter is like."

"It was worth a try," she says tiredly, with infinite sadness and resignation.

"Can't you just leave your brother?"

"Where would I go?"

"You could stay here with me."

He says it before he's even thought about it, and knows it's a mistake because her mouth curves into a sly smile. 

"That's nice of you, but Mason would burn your house down and feed you and your dogs to his pigs, probably. Plus, you're Hannibal Lecter's."

He waits for her to add _patient_ and when she doesn't he feels that familiar, choking weight that's been around his neck since the night at the barn. Some part of Will knows it's inevitable -- what he's becoming. Creature of bone and blood and lust, that fantasizes about bringing Hannibal kills and seeing the confusion and pride in his reaction. Who yearns for Hannibal's approval even as he is sickened by it, by himself. Who yearns to reach down into himself and understand and embrace all of what he is, even as that horrifies him. He can feel his human-ness, his compassion, like a thin gauze on his skin, becoming thinner, tearing. One day he will wake up and it will be gone and he will feel nothing but barrenness. Except, perhaps, when he kills. 

So he puts his arm around Margot, a little too hard, to remind her to be careful. She goes quiet and still. He leans in and smells her long, dark hair -- almost as dark as Alana's. 

"It's too bad you can't knock me up," Margot says jokingly, by way of trying to hide the fact she's frightened. 

Will smiles but doesn't feel it. 

"What if I just make you feel good?"

"Like I haven't heard that before."

Will stops holding her so hard. 

"Sorry," he says finally, and he feels the thin, silken gauze. Still there. For now.

After a moment, Margot relaxes. 

"I dated someone like you once," she says. 

"Oh?"

"He would have been perfect for me except he was a he, even if he hadn't accepted it yet," she says. "We talked about going away together. Running away from Mason."

She looks at him and the desperate expression is still there, beneath a mask of indifference. 

"I guess you dodged a bullet with me," she says. 

Will doesn't know what to say to that. 

"I should go."

She tries to get up and stumbles, so Will lets her stay and makes a bed on the couch. But she doesn't sleep in it. In the night, with the wind clawing and yowling at the walls of his house, Margot climbs into bed with him, all pale skin, rumpled clothes, dark hair. Bewildering. 

"I don't want to have sex with you," she whispers. "But can I actually _sleep_ with you?"

"Sure," he says, once the surprise fades. 

He falls asleep, her back pressed to his chest, lulled by her strange and reassuring warmth and solidness. 

That night, for the first time since the barn, he doesn't remember what he dreams of Hannibal. He doesn't remember dreaming about Alana and Hannibal having sex, either. He doesn't remember the black Wendigo and its soulless amber eyes. He doesn't remember of all their bodies tumbling together and merged, the boundaries between one person and the next murky and blurry and easy to forget. He doesn't remember his desire to fuck and be fucked, of power and control which is so much like lust he can't tell the difference. 

When he wakes up he's not confused about who or where he is. The dark hair lying next to him does not belong to Alana. His arm around Margot's waist has fallen asleep somehow, but he doesn't want to move just yet. He lies and listens to Margot's breathing. To his dogs fretting in the living room. To the sweet sweep of the wind through the trees outside. Can just sense the residual heat of red embers in the fireplace. Feels Margot's warmth, like a furnace. 

Home, home. 

Margot stirs. She turns over and squints at him, face puffy, a little flush in the cheeks, and so very alive. 

"Did you sleep okay?" he asks. 

"I did, actually," she sounds surprised, pleased. "You?"

"I did too," he says, and this time he feels the smile. "Do you want breakfast?"

"As long as there's no pork."

He laughs.

"Just eggs. Maybe pancakes or toast. Coffee."

"That sounds nice," she says.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion story to [Live Bait](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1531961), and serves as a "fix-it" for the scene with Margot and Will in 2x10 , "Naka-Choko". I don't really think the scene was done poorly, but I wanted to see if it could be rewritten without Will and Margot having sex, and do more to tell us about Margot without breaking from Will's POV. I also wanted to see if I could make the episode and scene fit into my personal headcanon with FTM!Will. I hope I've done that. 
> 
> I rather like my Margot better because I think being openly vulnerable, rather than covertly and through implication, makes her stronger and in some ways, more human and more rounded. There's nothing wrong with going to your therapy buddy's house and drinking and crying because your brother and your therapist are total shitheads. But that's just me. 
> 
> My explanation for how Margot knows Will is trans is that Freddie Lounds once dug up information about Will, including his "past as a woman", and published it. So it's rather unfortunate common knowledge, especially for folks who, like Margot, are willing to look Will up. But this also could explain even more why Will hates Freddie.


End file.
